Half a Reform

THE FACULTY COUNCIL'S official statement on sexual harassment this week came as a welcome surprise to those who had found the University's previous attitudes on the matter parochial and insensitive. A letter from Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky detailing the Council's position on harassment is a sensitive and substantive treatment of an issue which, in the months since it gained exposure last spring, has gradually become recognized as one of the most insidious problems facing women pursuing a Harvard education equal to men's.

Rosovsky's letter provides, among other things, a working definition of harassment, "the in appropriate attention by an instructor or the officer who is in a position to determine a student's grade or otherwise affect the student's academic performance. "It sets up some useful ground rules--for instance, any "amorous relationship" under such circumstances is the fault of the professor, a distinction that remained uncertain last spring when the dean ruled on the much-publicized case involving a female freshman and a visiting professor.

The welcome fact the letter makes clear is that the Faculty Council agrees that harassment is enough of a problem to require a unified policy. It settles that in the awkward power relationship between student and teacher, the University must step to protect the victim, and that there is need to publicize the problem so that women will know where to turn for the support they so badly need. What the letter hints at but does not quite address--as the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) has complained--is the extent to which the problem goes beyond rules and regulations, remaining a situation that mere statements of position will not wholly alleviate.

The Council has made strides in awareness, but it must not fall into the trap of thinking it has resolved the issue totally and, with a policy safely on the books, can lapse back into former unconcern. With that policy in place, it is time to move ahead on the more delicate matter of implementation. Primary among these are simplifying the complaint structures so women need not take an embarrassing personal problem through an elaborate bureaucracy and lifting the veil of secrecy that till now has cloaked the problem in an unnecessary ominousness.

While agreeing to publish year-end aggregate statistics on harassment cases, the Faculty Council has still balked at the logical step of informing harassment victims of the actions taken against the harasser involved; the stated reason is concern lest the victim "go public" with the incriminating data. This concern, though, is as misplaced as it has been all along. By scrupulously protecting the identities of professors found, in the wrong, the University not only indicates a tacit solidarity with the offenders but allows dangerous misperceptions to grow. A case in point is the problem noted by some minorities last year--that both of the two harassment incidents publicized over the last few years concerned minority professors, leading to the completely erroneous perception of harassment as somehow a minority problem.

Only open treatment of the problem like any other will transform the Council's laudable step into true reform. Having a policy is far better than not having one; but it takes more than a piece of legislation to alleviate a complicated, long-standing and deeply sensitive problem.